Chapter 60 - Surrounded

Inside the cave felt like a different world. It was dark so there was very little to see. The light Yama Mengyuan sparked only allowed for them to see little beyond their feet.

For what they could gather, there were bones and dismembered limbs that seemed to have been chewed on prior given the tears and bite marks.

The most distinct feature of this cave was the dense malignant aura. The essence was so thick that Tian Longmeng could smell its rot. He made an effort to avoid stepping on any of the animal parts or puddles of polluted water or else he might alert whatever is in the cave.

One thing they both knew is that whatever was at the end of this cave, must be the reason for this graveyard. This was basically confirmed by the increasing thickness of the aura as they progressed deeper within the cave.

By the time they reached the deepest point of the cave, they were gulping breaths. The malignant essence became so thick that it felt like they were submerged in honey. It was made worse by the fact that they could not ingest any of this essence to refresh themselves or else they would suffer from deviation or poisoning.

Luckily they did not need a torch this time. There was a strange, twisted tree that was home to a colony of lightbugs. There were enough bugs moving around to provide illumination through the dense fog, creating a hue of grey, green and purple lights.

Through the haze, Tian Longmeng noticed crops of spirit medicine scattered about the ground. There were occasional Spring Deathweeds and Tricolour Prism Herbs, but the stash many consisted of different variations of Corspeweeds.

The mountains of rotting flesh and bones provided great nutrition for these herbs, adding to Yama Mengyuan and Tian Longmeng's bounty.

"Other people were here before." Yama Mengyuan inspected some of the corpses.

Tian Longmeng shared a look. "It seems that they were not lucky." Indeed a lot of the corpses here were human but judging from how clean their skeletons were, it seemed that they were the main delicacy for the herbs.

Yama Mengyuan found some armour and artifacts lying about. They were all high quality equipment, but sadly, they were all damaged somewhat or else she would have risked collecting them. "The people who came here before must have been really skilled." She glanced at the artifacts one more time before heading towards another mountain of bones.

Tian Longmeng himself headed towards a shining patch in the wall that caught his eye. He found large chunks of jade ore protruding from the wall. "Hey come see this." He alerted Yama Mengyuan who was busy playing with some bones.

"Amazing, that is a big piece of jade ore. We could even get a moon jade out of this." Yama Mengyuan inspected the ore for any unusual details.

Tian Longmeng did not stay any longer. "It does not matter anyways. If we dig it out, we could alert unwanted issues." Tian Longmeng returned to a patch of Tricolour Prism Herbs. "Plus, we came for the herbs. We could always sell this information and let the instructors deal with this."

Yama Mengyuan seemed unwilling to simply leave the ore alone but she eventually returned to collect the herbs.

As they rustled, reached, and grabbed herb after herb, they did not notice when they startled a half-dead mouse. It scuttled away from the bones that rolled from their plundering.

The mouse ran into one of the pathways apart from the entrance Tian Longmeng and Yama Mengyuan came from. It subsequently woke a corpse wolf who investigated where the mouse came from.

Rawr.

Tian Longmeng's acute senses were alerted by the bark. "We have trouble." He warned Yama Mengyuan as he stopped picking herbs.

"More than trouble." Yama Mengyuan could hear the replying growls from the multiple passageways, indicating that they were dealing with a pack of corpse wolves.

In less than a minute, they were completely surrounded by corpse wolves. All of them looked rabid and eager for the new flesh in front of them.

Tian Longmeng could count up to 15 of them. Luckily, he could also tell that they were not that strong. Zhou Wei would be able to take one down easily.

He glanced at the floor before speaking. "I have a plan."

"What are you talking about?" Yama Mengyuan turned her head slightly, still maintaining eye contact with the wolves.

Tian Longmeng suddenly kicked a sharp bone into the eye of one of the wolves. The bone was too fast to dodge so the wolf straightway died.

"It seems like the brain is the weak point." Tian Longmeng confirmed his theory while kicking more bones.

The other wolves were startled by the sudden attack but they quickly turned to aggression and made their way biting towards Yama Mengyuan and Tian Longmeng.

"What do you mean that the brain is the weak point?" Yama Mengyuan barely had time to question Tian Longmeng properly thanks to the wolves. She thrusted one of the knives into one of the wolves' eyes.

To her surprise, it sprawled on the ground with no further movements. Tian Longmeng was right, but she wondered how he knew about their weaknesses.

Tian Longmeng was having a hard time by himself as well. Firstly, he counted far too low. There were at least 20 of them coming at him alone. Also, even though his bone thing was working, it was still hard having to dodge every little thing that came from their mouths.

The second he kicked a bone into one, he dipped to grab and stab a bone into another wolf who was approaching from beneath. The fight with Mengyuan was physical taxing but it was mentally taxing to deal with all of these opponents at once.

"Screw twenty, I'm sure there is at least 50 of these bastards." Tian Longmenng was exaggerating, but to him, he felt as if there really were fifty of these wolves attacking him.

After about a minute of acrobatic moves and non-stop fighting, Tian Longmeng's sweat began mixing with the dripping ooze from the wolves on the ground. It also began running into his eye, making it that much harder to see. All he could do was sense the approximate locations by the blurry images and rough growling.

Unfortunately, his accuracy decreased tremendously, and so did his navigation. "Woah." Tian Longmeng accidentally slipped on a bone and landed on his bottom.

The wolves did not relent and pounced terrifyingly on Tian Longmeng to rip him to pieces. Tian Longmeng could barely close his eyes and grab a bone shard and thrust at a wolf's neck as a last hope measure.

However, he was forced to open his eyes thanks to the heat that burnt his hands. He saw the wolf that hanged over him, dead and burning.

He turned to Yama Mengyuan who was busy with her own batch of wolves. "Are you some baby, why are you giving up against some dead trash?" She screamed.

Tian Longmeng shook his head and wiped the sweat from his face. Luckily, thanks to the fire, the other wolves stood afar off from Tian Longmeng, giving him time to readjust. He took one big gulp of breath before springing back into the fight.

"Hou."

With a shout, Tian Longmeng kicked the burning wolf towards the other corpse wolves. Naturally, they separated to avoid the fire, but Tian Longmeng took advantage of this separation to deal with them in smaller numbers.

He dashed left with impeccable speed and blasted one of the wolves head off with an Overbearing Sweep. He followed that up with ripping the upper jaw from a wolf and throwing it into another's skull.

Around this time, Yama Mengyuan was wrapping up her fight with the wolves. Due to the fact that she had controllable knives, she could make quick work of the corpse wolves. In less than five minutes, she was finished with her part.

She turned around to help Tian Longmeng given the blunder he had a while ago. She only heard the thump when he dropped and lent a hand by setting the wolf on fire; however, she was still worried about him. She realized her worries were unneeded as she looked at his monstrous display.

Tian Longmeng ripped through skull after skull like a desolate savage hungry for war. A wolf tried to run around him only to have its head directly blown off by Tian Longmeng's heel. Another wolf was less fortunate and had itself pinned to the burning wolf.

By the time the other wolves found the courage to go around the fire, Tian Longmeng had already cleaned up the ones he was dealing with. It was a massacre with Tian Longmeng as the monster.